Note 113 — Chapter XXXIV · THE FINITENESS OF THE UNIVERSE

The problem might be on a different footing were space-time to be considered atomic; for, as we have mentioned, in a discrete manifold, in contradistinction to a continuous one, a metrics might be immanent in the continuum even in the total absence of matter. There is always the possibility that we may be on the wrong track when we assume space-time to be continuous, and it cannot be denied that the existence of quantum phenomena lends colour to this possibility. So long, however, as we assume the continuity of the fundamental extension, de Sitter’s universe, existing with a perfectly definite metrics independently of the presence of matter, appears extremely improbable.